Topic: Letter to Theymos: Provide medium for the forum in the face of the mixer ban (Read 686 times)

It is a completely different approach, yes. It is enabling the discussion of measures that can be made in the future...maybe, more evolved measures. Maybe, more evolved, decentralized mixer, or decentralized exchange discussion, and how to go about building these on the Bitcoin ecosystem. Maybe, discussion about alternative on-chain privacy that is less frowned upon by authorities and less preferable by bad parties. The possibilities are endless with a discussion board that involves privacy. Cyber security and privacy go hand in hand, security keep people safe, privacy keep people safe. The two topics go hand in hand.


Let's not feed this pointless discussion.

Even if this is granted, it has a complete different approach to tackle the issues on ground concerning mixers and I don't think this can change anything, but the whole idea of the cyber security measure is a good idea but considering that with mixers ban may change nothing about the decision already made.


Always say something you have an idea about it, have you ever seen a situation whereby you see loycev getting users unbanned, and if you're mistaking from that of proxy ban, then many other people has that same right to unbanned newbies who have evil record of their IP address used at the point of registration, which i think should be something entirely different from the normal ban we are talking about here in this context.

All you need to do is visit my trust viewer and look at the members who have "~"'d me, to know/reason why, on top of Shenanigans garbage, this thread has continued to be derailed. Those who claim that I am aiming for attention with this thread, are simply here to cause drama.

Shenanigan is one who is here to stir up trouble. Why he chose here, is another story that may relate to the above. I don't know.

Others, like yourself, innocently may not see the link that is clear to me...which I'll explain:


The ban of mixers are a big hit to on-chain privacy.
The cybersecurity & privacy board are a healthy discussion place and a plus to privacy.

No cybersecurity & privacy board + the ban of mixers provides a big message from this forum administration: We do not want to (and we can't) talk about privacy, or enable it.
Cybersecurity & privacy board added + the ban of mixers is another message entirely: We will abide by the authorities but we will keep healthy, legitimate discussion about privacy (a core value of Bitcoin's) open to all, in a board vote which the active/voting community has decided on with consensus.

The timing is not coincidental, I believe there is a need for a response from theymos by the time mixers are banned, so we can know which message the forum is giving us.

It is unfortunate to see that the thread has deviated too far from its path. Perhaps misunderstanding and confusion occurred among members due to the link between the topic of creating a cybersecurity board and the issue of banning mixer campaigns in the forum.

I am one of the members who supported your request and still do, but frankly, I was surprised by the link between the issue of approval of the cybersecurity board and the ban on mixers. Perhaps some members think that you are chasing the opportunity to obtain approval.

Although I do not doubt your good intentions towards the forum, I think that perhaps it is better to postpone the topic until the beginning of the new year and see the results and effects of the decision to ban mixer campaigns.

Quit the witch hunt. This thread has nothing to do with that thread. I've already said that in other posts.

Anyone with half a brain can use this logic:
Cybersecurity & Privacy board with free knowledge would hinder any service offering cybersecurity and privacy related services

I posted that thread purely as a medium for anyone who wanted assistance while the board was being made. The price is purely the cost of my time. It is not some massive attempt for profit. $42 for 1.5-2hrs time? Come on.


Consensus is consensus. If the other 3 million were active, I see no reason why they wouldn't have voted.


Attention seeking....


...You both make me sick.

I haven't bumped that thread nor promoted it since it was created months and months ago. I am not actively trying to gain business. My dedication to a board that the community want, that everyone in the community will benefit from, has zero to do with that thread...and as I've said before, it will only be hindered after the board is added, as a lot of the info I possess will go into the board.

You can both twist things as you like - This thread has a clear intention, to get an answer from theymos in the face of a hindrance to anonymity and privacy that will take place on January 1. It is a clear letter, it clearly updates the progress of what the active members of the community have asked for, and it provides an official, public request.

I don't think you will convince anyone that I am campaigning for this board just to make $21~ per hour from providing security audits for people, and giving information to people that they'll otherwise get for free. Get real.

You're right that Satoshi discussed about privacy in the Bitcoin's whitepaper but that privacy wasn't meant to be something like the one that the mixers give. There were no chain analysts back then and Satoshi mentioned something that was acceptable as part of privacy in those days.


It was directly mentioned in the Bitcoin white paper that public can see who is sending an amount of Bitcoin to whom but they won't be able to link that transaction to anyone. I believe these days it's not hard for authorities and other chain analysis originations to determine that who made the transaction and linking it to an individual isn't that hard anymore for them.

The mixers were playing their part to add that privacy element to the transactions and surely they had achieved their goals because linking of those transactions with someone was pretty tough when the transaction went through a mixer but some of the mixers were doing shady things as well which were noticed by the authorities and that become the reason for seizing of mixers.

It is remarkable and you are not the only one who has noticed that.

In between posting erratically by amongst other things attacking some members and being hypocritical with his gambling views, he has been trying to re-invent himself as a cyber security expert but he has no skills to make that qualification.

Keeping that in mind, he wants to charge $42 for a service that he offers by copy/pasted some text which does not equate to any expertise here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/discussion-cybersecurity-and-privacy-board-poll-request-v1-5434404 and that seems to be the obvious motive behind his constant pushing for theymos to create the board.

For the record: privacy was mentioned in Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin whitepaper:
I already saw a coinjoin campaign that will soon resume.

Obviously, banning mixers from being advertised here doesn't stop them from being advertised elsewhere. But that's not Bitcointalk's (or theymos') problem anymore.

I guess you're trying to live out the meaning of your moniker, "shenanigan". Otherwise, I don't see what could occasion all those wild accusations you're throwing up on this thread. Someone should kindly check up the meaning of shenanigan before they get unnecessarily serious with your POV.

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On the mixer ban, I'm cocksure there's going to be a ripple effect that will empower other competitors that can wrestle traffic from this forum. Already, I've read about a manager who has concluded plans to move a mixing service they're managing here to a sister forum. In time to come, more managers are going to find fertile grounds to move theirs too; not just only mixers but other advertising promotions. I don't know if theymos' decision to ban mixers here outright will be a good one at the end. This is an experiment we all hope will end well. It's a make or mar moment.

The OP is basing their statistics on a poll of a couple of dozen users out of the more than three million registered users?

Remarkable.

You're right that mixers were intended to offer privacy in the beginning but they were also run and managed by humans and that means the ones who were managing those mixers had their own shady side which none of us was aware of. I know that there are still good guys that are running their mixer sites but in past most trusted mixers have done activities that made theymos to ban even those mixers as well that didn't do anything wrong. The ban on mixers is surely for the safety of the forum and its members and theymos has no personal issues with those mixers and their owners.

Bitcoin was meant to be decentralized and there was no mention of privacy of hiding one's transactions in original code of Bitcoin. Satoshi wanted to have a system where someone can easily transfer funds using a currency that's not managed or controlled by centralized system and he created Bitcoin. I know that privacy is a very important thing for everyone and the board you're suggesting is going to be helpful, but I'm quite sure there will be users who will share or leak a lot of things in that board which isn't going to be a good thing for the forum and its members.

Although, I have supported your initial application of that board and I'm still a supporter of the idea but I think there should be strict rules on that board so it can be useful for the ones who want to be safe from the hackers and scammers. I know that such board can be a useful place to promote awareness about scams and privacy things that could help the ones to be on the safe side but there are some negative things that can also take place on that board.

Well, thanks for the info. Again. Now that you mention it, I sounded like that, but I hadn't thought about it when I wrote the post.


Of course, that's what I think too, no matter how much he denies it.


That not only happens in the USA. In the EU you have laws at the EU level, at the state level, and depending on the state, at the regional level, sometimes more than one level of local laws, county laws, and so on. There seems to be no end to the voracity of the public authorities and the growing regulatory complexity.

Yeah I have lived in the USA and the laws are complex and vast.

50 sets of  state laws
Hundreds of county laws
Thousands of city laws
and federal laws.

on three levels tax, criminal , civil.

I am at my desk looking at 45 plus federal tax books which are just for some of the federal tax laws.

Just thought I'd address this point--it makes total sense that a business would try to remain honest if they face reputational damage should they not do so.  The only problem is that there could be shady shit going on behind the scenes that no one outside the advertiser knows about, and it's not until either they get caught or pull an exit scam that they face the blowback, and by the time that happens they couldn't care less what members of this forum write about them.

Similarly, there are a lot of reasons why corporations should do things, but sometimes they don't.  It could be because of greed, incompetence, or whatever, but in the world of crypto it's damn hard to predict what a project/exchange/business is going to do or why.

I hate the ban on mixers on principle, but I see Theymos's side of it as well.  Try to fight the government and you're guaranteed to lose or go broke trying--and AFAIK mixers aren't illegal yet, but I'm guessing Theymos is anticipating that that's where the US government is going.

Yours is about the most apt reply in this thread because it captures the essence of the motive behind it. This thread seems to be more about attention-seeking on part of the OP for his own agenda consisting of pushing for the creation of the board he dreams theymos will accept.

I could be wrong (I have been in the past about many things) but it seems as though by creating what could be seen by others as some form of misconstrued legitimacy by being the creator of a security board will probably help bring in some extra customers for the $42 he charges for a service based on what he copy/pasted in the OP of this thread: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/discussion-cybersecurity-and-privacy-board-poll-request-v1-5434404

Some members actually believing he is well versed in the cybersecurity field is about absurd as you could imagine. Here he writes: "Why am I running the service and what qualifies me to do so?" then fails to provide anything of substance (including qualifications and/or experiences) which qualifies him to do so.

As for this thread, in my opinion "Letter to Theymos" should have been "a PM to theymos" first before attention-seeking in the Meta board.

It's a moot point and an ongoing battle. As said in OP, there's no doubt that you can't win with mixers. They're either good people for freedom and privacy, with bad people using them and ruining it for legitimate users, or bad people running them and using others to hide coins...the ratio, unknown.
It's not something that's purely bad or good either way. You're always going to have good users using what they think are legitimate mixers. Those good people are the ones I am hoping will make use of the CS & P board if theymos decided to add it.


That's a damn shame. I guess the trash just has to remain then. It's a little bit ridiculous though.

It definitely didn't indicate to discuss loycev's permissions on the forum and things about user bans.

I've seen many scamming mixers over the years. Until recently, I didn't realize some mixers may just be created by non-scamming bad guys in need of good people looking for privacy. I can't be certain which mixers fall in which category, but by now I think it's likely both exist.
I also considered Bitcointalk the place to be to find honest mixers. It's weird though: that could mean a honest mixer is ran by what some governments consider to be criminals.

"Staff" members can't delete posts. Xal0lex is a Moderator on his own boards, not on Meta.

I thought the same. That probably didn't help in staying on-topic.

You can't do that in Meta.

Mixers offer privacy. Mixers are being taken away. The mixer ban is a hindrance to privacy. The board will be a supplement for that hindrance - and for those that feel hindered by the removal of mixers from the forum, the board might provide legitimate supplements to the removal.



I'd be happy to however I believe that some members whom the community would much prefer over myself had put their hands up in the discussion thread already I'll double check that and edit this post with all of the quotes later on.

The title of this topic is a little misleading as I initially thought that it had something to do about the mixer ban. But actually it's just another request to create the Cybersecurity and Privacy board, which is definitely a good idea as I've previously stated.

Have you figured out who would be the moderator for such a board? I think that might be one hurdle you need to overcome.

This thread has nothing to do with the temporary service I offered, all of the info being used there will be published for free in the board if it's added. I only have good intentions with this board, as do all of the people who voted for it.

As for me "taking advantage" - This is for everyone here. For the safety of everyone, for the security of everyone, and even spanning further than just this forum. For you to think that I am doing this for my own benefit just goes to show how determined you are to hurt my reputation. You are one of the perfect examples of the defaulttrust system being far from perfect.

Take your unbased accusations to the reputation board so I can laugh at you there, not in serious threads...and also, how dare you put my thread on the same level as this total spammer "shenanigan".


I'll be making a new self-moderated topic if a moderator doesn't remove the obvious spam that's occurred here, since this one has been completely derailed with totally off topic spam posts. I have no idea how it got onto the topic of bans and permissions when it had absolutely nothing to do with that topic.


While what you are suggesting is a ridiculous one, it's probably the next best thing to do if a moderator doesn't just delete the completely off topic spam (which they very well should, or merge them into a new thread) I can't believe that this kind of obvious spam is just being allowed in such a serious topic about a 12 month, consensus voted request in the face of a huge hit to on-chain privacy.


Probably the only on topic post in the sea of off topic nonsense. Thank you.

Definitely not demanding theymos. I'm writing a public letter, appreciating a response before mixers are banned. As following that point, privacy will be hindered on this forum - and this board will be a fair medium to the ban. As of Jan 1, it will be 12 days from 12 months since the request was made. That's a long time for a community to be heard, especially when there is a 90% consensus agreeing that the addition is not just in line with Bitcoin, but a need for the community given all of the threats to security and privacy out there.

To me, a response is needed to know whether our security of coins and privacy is cared about, if we are on a forum that is actually not entirely governed by theymos, or if community consensus votes and requests are a priority. The only reason I see for this board not being added as a medium to the removal of an industry that enabled on-chain privacy, is that if a party other than theymos is calling the shots and if the board is against their interests. I think that'd be fair to say, as if theymos did solely govern this forum, then I can't see why at least a yes/no hasn't been provided to date. I'm sure theymos would/is an advocate of cybersecurity or privacy if he runs a forum to do with Bitcoin. Both are in line with its purpose, sovereignty of bitcoin and privacy of bitcoin ownership.

I hope I've worded this correctly. It's not meant to be hostile or assumptive of any party, it's just my thoughts on this interesting set of matters.